SETTING aside the doubtful Cressener Cantata, we know
on Beethoven’s own authority that his first compositions were a set of
Variations on a March by Dressler and three Sonatas for clavier dedicated
to the Elector Maximilian Friedrich. Thus the boy attacked at once two
musical forms he was to make especially his own.

It is also significant that these Dressler Variations
and the Sonatas were for clavier. Paul Bekker, one of the most Beethoven-minded
of critics, says: ‘Beethoven’s work is based on the piano: therein lie
its roots and there it first bore perfect fruit.’ Without quite supporting
Bekker (for Beethoven’s work certainly rested on a broader basis), one
must still reckon the piano as among the most important influences of
his first period. What could be more natural? Beethoven, though no iconoclast,
was always on the side of modernity and progress. The piano was par
excellence the modern instrument of that day. It came to the fore
in Bonn during the seventeen-eighties and it actually got its sixth octave
of compass during Beethoven’s first decade in Vienna. The powerful tone
qualities offered him an adequate vehicle for his boldest harmonic and
melodic designs, and, being himself a magnificent pianist, he expanded
the scope of piano music till it is hard to apportion the debt between
instrument and player. Later his deafness divorced in him the executant
from the composer, a disaster which proved, as Bekker says, ‘the historic
origin of the present-day distinction between productive and reproductive
musical activity.’ By the time Beethoven was fifty-three he had explored
and exhausted practically every possibility of the piano.

There is one further matter of general application to
be considered before surveying the music itself: Beethoven’s faculty of
prevision. What Mr. Newman said of single movements is, I believe, equally
true of Beethoven’s life-work: his ‘vague general sense of the totality
of the movement gradually condensed this into a vital structural material,
and finally re-wrought this into a whole that was the first indefinite
conception made perfectly definite.’

Even as a child Beethoven saw far off the things that
were to be later.

From the hid battlements of Eternity,

Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then

Round the half-glimpsed turrets slowly wash again.

Prevision is a faculty quite distinct from that of revision
by which a composer either rewrites a work out of his mature experience,
or else brings forward old material to serve new purposes. Beethoven had
both capacities in an extraordinary degree, and held them in amazing equipoise.
They are recognizable even in his first work.

The nine Variations on Dressler’s March in C minor were
composed in 1783 - or perhaps earlier, as that was the year of publication.
On their own merits they are neat, discreet music, superior to the theme
on which they are spun. But for us (who from the distance of more than
a century can see Beethoven’s career in the map-like manner enjoyed by
the Intelligences in Hardy’s ‘Dynasts’) the real excitement is that the
Dressler Variations are a kind of child’s sketch for the mighty thirty-two
Variations on an original theme composed by Beethoven in 1806. Original
theme? Yes, in that it is wholly Beethoven’s; but all the same it is like
the ghost of Dressler’s March, transformed into a chaconne and translated
to an Olympian grandeur.

Note how magnificently the bass marches with Beethoven;
with Dressler it simply goose-steps. Beethoven’s basses are worth a study
in themselves. Continuing the comparison between the two works one sees
they run a not dissimilar course, allowing for the infinitely grander
scale and richer decoration of the later work. At the end they diverge.
In the short early Variations Beethoven modulates to C major for the last
variation, thus making it an apotheosis of the old Tierce de Picardie
(the major chord which by ancient custom closed all works in a minor key),
while in the thirty-two Variations he places a group of C major variations
in the middle, flanking them by minor sections before and after in an
organized design that approximated to aria form.

The three Max Friedrich Sonatas for clavier belong to
nearly the same date (1783) as the Dressler Variations and are much more
interesting. The first, in E flat major, cautiously follows the old type
of binary (not triune) sonata form for its first movement; but already
Beethoven showed his instinct for the psychologically sensitive spot in
sonata form, viz., the return to the principal key after the development.
In later works his imagination and inspiration often rose to their highest
at this point. In this boyish movement he was not content to slide back
by the routine reversal of the outward journey, so preceded the return
by some arpeggios that nearly forecast his figure for the finale of his
‘Moonlight’ Sonata. The second Sonata, in F minor, is a still more remarkable
presentiment of a later work-his Sonate Pathetique of 1797. One opens
with a short, pathetic larghetto, the other with a grave, preparing
an allegro in which the slow section recurs with strong emotional effect.
There is even kinship of phrase between the two allegros. The other movements
of the F minor, well contrasted as to material, are wonderfully ‘in the
picture.’ ‘A knowledge of suffering, appalling in a twelve year old boy,
trembles through the quiet andante, and rages through the excited, urgent,
unisono passages of the presto’ says Bekker.

The third Sonata, in D major, is rather Haydn-like in
its tunefulness.

Compared with these sonatas Beethoven’s other keyboard
compositions for the next few years are unexciting, though several have
some significance for students. For example, the two Preludes modulating
through all keys show Beethoven as an elementary experimenter in the science
of key relationship and contrast, where later his power was amazing. The
Prelude in F minor is simply a handy little piece for clavier or organ
with which to fill a gap.

The Rondo in A major is clean, neat and tuneful, with
just one modulation which - simple as it seems - is, I think, Beethoven’s
earliest example of a pivot modulation, i.e. a note or notes approached
as belonging to one key and quitted as in another, the music being swung
over on a pivot. The device may mean nothing with a commonplace composer,
but in the hands of Beethoven and Schubert it can be magical. Therefore
one looks with reverence at the little change here from A minor to C major,
catching in it the first glimpse of things to be - for example, the superb
passage in the Kyrie of the Missa Solemnis where (as Professor Tovey says)
the ‘Christe eleison dies away on an incomplete minor chord which, by
a method of modulation typical in Beethoven’s works, becomes part of the
original major tonic chord of the Kyrie.’

The remaining works for piano during Beethoven’s Bonn
period were a Rondo, a Concerto in E flat major, another Concerto in D
major, of which only one movement now exists, a Minuet (not published
till 1805), a Sonatina written for Wegeler, and twenty-four Variations
on Righini’s Arietta Venni Amore (1790). These Variations show many authentic
Beethovenisms and, besides being valuable as a portrait of Beethoven the
pianist in his last year or two at Bonn, they figured in his famous contest
with Sterkel, and later at Vienna. Dr. Ernest Walker, in his admirable
study of Beethoven, describes these Variations as of unusual technical
difficulty and mentions their ‘great variety and wealth of light and shade,
and a few strange forecasts of much later music.’

Beethoven’s first years in Vienna were not productive
of much piano music. For one thing, he was seriously exploring chamber
music, and for another, he was doggedly studying counterpoint. From 1792
till 1795 he apparently composed only two sets of variations on themes
by Dittersdorf and Waldstein, a fragment of a sonata for Eleonore von
Breuning and a couple of sonatinas. But in reality he had three works
of first-class value on the stocks - his Sonatas for piano, Op. 2, dedicated
to Haydn. Whether they dated from Bonn, or whether he began them in Vienna
and incorporated with them some old material from his piano quartets of
1785, is unknown. The three sonatas made their appearance in 1795, the
earliest peaks in that magnificent series of thirty-two sonatas which
runs parallel to Beethoven’s symphonies like a mountain chain in music
and is not less glorious, though on a different scale.

Haydn and Mozart had been masterly in their treatment
of sonata form. They had also coloured their music with feeling, sometimes
even with emotion, and Haydn often composed to some little story in his
mind. But where they were masterly, Beethoven was the master. His nature
was charged with that excessiveness which Masefield remarks in Shakespeare.
When Masefield says: ‘The mind of the man was in the kingdom of vision,
hearing a new speech and seeing what worldly beings do not see, the rush
of the powers and the fury of elemental passions,’ it might be of Beethoven,
not of Lear or his creator, that he speaks. Beethoven’s sonatas and symphonies,
with their boundless variety, force, life, character and emotion, inevitably
suggest a comparison with Shakespeare. Time and circumstance combined
to give Shakespeare and England to each other at the period when the English
language and drama were at their greatest. Beethoven came to music at
the moment when its world language and the superb medium of cyclic form
were for the first time complete in essentials. ‘His early works,’ said
Parry, ‘were in conformity with the style and structural principles of
his predecessors; but he began, at least in piano works, to build at once
upon the topmost stone of their edifice. His earliest sonatas (Op. 2)
are on the scale of their symphonies.’ Quite true. Beethoven took over
cyclic form [Note: Here, and throughout this book, the term ‘cyclic form’
is used in the same sense as in the volume on The Viennese Period by Sir
Henry Hadow in the Oxford History of Music, namely, to denote the entities
of symphony, sonata, concerto, quartet, etc., formed by their characteristic
and organized group of movements.] fresh from Haydn and Mozart, and from
Clementi the new piano style, broad and almost orchestral; but the emotional
content, the ‘poetic idea’ as Beethoven himself called it, was his own.
‘I generally have some picture in my mind when composing,’ he said.

But his ‘pictures’ were very different things from the
placidly held images that served Haydn. Beethoven saw his pictures with
the terrific clearness of a spectator at a drama, and experienced them
with the intensity of all the participants put together.

This intense reality was apparent from the first. Structurally
there is little in the Sonata No. 1, in F minor, that might not have been
done by Haydn or Mozart, but in feeling the difference is immense. The
phrases of the first movement are clinched, the relentless rat-tatting
chords of the finale ring through the dark F minor mood like military
commands on the rush of a gale at night. The adagio, the most Mozart-like
and least original, was taken over from one of Beethoven’s Bonn piano
quartets. The minuet and trio, though Haydn-like, are Beethovenish too
at the point where the return of the tonic key in the trio is prefaced
by a delicious passage in sixths that swells to fortissimo and sinks almost
to nothing.

The Sonata in A major, No. 2, is generally considered
the finest of the group in Op. z. Its special features are the ‘new aspect’
Beethoven puts upon the limits of the first sections, the noble D major
largo appassionato - which Dr. Walker describes as ‘perhaps the earliest
example of a slow movement charged with really deep, earnest feeling’
- and the unmistakable Beethoven touch in the scherzo. Haydn and Mozart
were perfectly acquainted with the scherzo as a form - Haydn, in fact,
had established its presence in the cyclic scheme. But until Beethoven
no one divined its real nature and functions.

The C major Sonata, Op. 2, No. 3, is extremely brilliant
as piano writing. There is a cadenza just before the coda of the first
movement and the finale is quite formidably difficult, with strings of
rapid staccato chords of the sixth in the right hand. The second subject
of the first movement, by the way, is said to come from the Bonn quartets.

The Sonata in E flat major, Op. 7, is yet more considerable.
Composed about 1796, it is dedicated to Beethoven’s pupil, the Countess
Babette von Keglevics, a young 1aty not generally considered handsome,
with whom Beethoven is believed to have been in love. The energy and grace
of the first movement, the emotional eloquence of the largo con gran espressione,
the trio with its mysterious ‘moonlight’-like triplets, and the caressing
theme of the rondo - soft as the arms of the loved one - all corroborate
the name Die Verliebte (The Maiden in Love) by which the Sonata was known
in Beethoven’s lifetime.

The next piano sonatas were begun in 1796, according
to Nottebohm, and finished in 1798. There were three under the one number,
Op. 10, of which those in C minor and F major are distinguished by melodic
charm and stylistic resource, but are otherwise not very significant.
The D major Sonata, last in the group, is a superb work. ‘The individuality
of style is absolute and unchallenged, the structure of all the movements
is mature and flawless,’ is Dr. Walker’s summing-up. The slow movement
is the famous largo e mesto in D minor, a magnificent poem of melancholy
which makes one understand how Beethoven could move a whole audience to
tears when he extemporized. He said of it himself that it ‘expressed a
melancholic state of mind, that it portrayed every subtle shade, every
phase of melancholy.’ The cluster of crushed seconds grinding upon each
other in the final chords of bars 84 and 85 are perhaps the most famous
example in Beethoven’s piano music of his instinct for intensifying a
harmonic situation. Crushed seconds have grown so ordinary in modern music
that when a clever composer wants to produce an exceptional effect he
does it by a common chord! But these legions of seconds are meaningless
compared to those which Beethoven calculated and placed so perfectly with
regard to their context and to psychological truth.

The Sonate Pathetique in C minor, Op. 13, composed about
1798, has already been mentioned as the fulfilment of Beethoven’s own
prophetic little sonata of 1783. Dussek too anticipated the Pathetique.
It has been pointed out that his Sonata in C minor ‘contains some startling
likenesses to that work.’ Dussek’s Sonata dates from about 1793. Question:
(1) Did the famous Dussek get his structural plan from the work of the
young and obscure composer Beethoven? (2) Were both men indebted to some
now forgotten original? (3) Were they independently inspired?

In poetic content Beethoven’s Pathetique is tragedy as
the young feel it, with the glamour, urgency, even exaltation, of a Romeo
and Juliet. And few southern love-scenes could be more softly glowing
than Beethoven’s slow movement with its almost unbelievable melodic loveliness
and velvety tone.

The next two Sonatas, in E major and G major, Op. 14,
are happy things, that may be contemporaneous with the Pathetique, though
published only in 1799. Speaking of them many years later, Beethoven said
to Schindler: ‘When I wrote my sonatas people were more poetic and such
indications [of the music’s meaning] were superfluous. At that time ...
every one saw that the two Sonatas, Op. 14, represented a struggle between
two opposing principles, an argument between two persons.’

Just as Beethoven’s pathetic phase in piano music had
closed with Op. 13, so his ‘first period’ works for piano ended with the
Sonata in B flat major, Op. 22, composed in 1800. It was on a grand scale
throughout - as often happened when he was in the mood of his initial
key - and the four movements displayed cyclic form at its ‘full moon.’
Beethoven was really pleased with it himself. ‘Hat sich gewaschen,’ was
his phrase - an idiom that Professor Tovey translates by analogy as ‘takes
the cake.’ ‘In England we do not talk of sonatas that ‘wash themselves,’
though - come to think of it - to say that a sonata could stand London
laundering would be a remarkable testimonial of immortality.

After achieving the fulfilment of everything the eighteenth
century believed a sonata should be, most men would have rested on their
laurels. Not so Beethoven. There was more than a dash of Bonaparte and
Alexander about him. He felt the desire for fresh worlds to conquer. Besides,
the Romantic Movement in German literature had just been born. Whether
Beethoven was concretely acquainted with its ideals and output, or whether
he felt them through that curious telepathy of genius by which artists
become aware of ideas elsewhere, I do not know, but his next Sonata, A
flat major, Op. 26, was a marked departure towards romanticism. From then
onwards, through most of the sixteen sonatas of his middle period, it
seems as if he were intent on enriching classic sonata form with the romantic
elements in music - those same elements which in literature found their
expression through lyric and ballad poetry. ‘The imagination and the reason
must both be satisfied, but above all things the imagination,’ as Parry
said. To unify two apparently opposite principles without the loss of
any essential good in either was a task after Beethoven’s own heart

The A flat Sonata, the first of his new period, composed
in 1801, shows signs of being a hybrid. An andante con variazioni takes
the place of the customary allegro of cyclic form; then follows a scherzo,
molto allegro, going like the wind, instead of the usual adagio; then
an intensely sombre slow movement, the Marcia funebre sulla morte d’un
Eroe, and then a rushing finale. Thus the order and character of the movements
is new and thoroughly romantic. The material, on the other hand, casts
back towards the past. Czerny rather implies that this sonata was written
to score off Cramer (then in Vienna), who had made a sensation with his
Sonata in A flat 3/4 time, dedicated to Haydn, and Beethoven purposely
put a reminiscence of the Clementi-Cramer passage work into the finale.
A desire to eclipse Paer is also said to account for the inclusion of
the Funeral March. These anecdotes may explain the presence of the older
stylistic elements, but they do not explain the romantic plan of the Sonata
as a whole. By placing the scherzo second in his group of movements, Beethoven
showed that even at this early date he had no hesitation in sacrificing
convention to aesthetic demands. He clearly thought the scherzo would
upset his poetic plan if it followed the Funeral March.

The two Sonatas of Op. 27, in E flat major and C sharp
minor, and the Sonata in D major, Op. 28, all belong to the year 1801.
They are wonderful successes. Each of those in Op. 27 is designated as
Sonata quasi una Fantasia, and designed to be played without a break between
the movements. The order of the movements is dictated by their poetic
content; they have the glamour that hangs over a magnificent extemporization,
yet their aesthetic structure is masterly. The name ‘Moonlight,’ by which
the C sharp minor is known, was not of Beethoven’s bestowing, but it is
at least a token of the enchantment cast by the music. The first movement,
adagio, with its mist of slow, moving triplets and its melody slowly rising
from ‘monotone on a prevalent rhythmic figure,’ is as impressionistic
as anything in Debussy. The figure as used by Beethoven is full of mystery.

There is nothing mysterious about the D major Sonata,
Op. 28, to which the Hamburg publisher Cranz gave the name Pastoral. It
is a felicitous work, more or less of a reversion to classic order, and
the andante is said by Czerny to have been long a favourite with Beethoven.

The period between Op. 28 and the Sonatas of Op. 31 is
the place assigned by Czerny to Beethoven’s remark to Krumpholz: ‘I am
by no means satisfied with my works hitherto, and I intend to make a fresh
start from today.’

If so, then the year was 1802, exactly the crisis of
the conflict in Beethoven’s own nature. I cannot honestly say I find anything
new in the G major Sonata, Op. 31, No. 1, though Beethoven seems extremely
preoccupied in it by experiments with odd syncopations, embellishments
and dynamics. But the D minor Sonata, Op. 31, No. 2, is altogether magnificent
from start to finish.

Beethoven’s introduction of instrumental recitative into
the first movement is a masterstroke; the adagio is as beautiful as profound;
the finale is so wistful, sensitive and pliant that one only discovers
afterwards with sheer amazement that with the exception of one quaver
quite near the beginning Beethoven has maintained an unbroken rhythm of
semiquavers right through a movement of 399 bars. It was just such a bit
of wizardry as Beethoven liked to perform for his own satisfaction. It
is also an example of his power to lift an idea out of the region of material
phenomena into another world, for the suggestion of the regular rhythm
of the first phrase came to him, according to Czerny, from seeing a horse
gallop past his windows at Heiligenstadt.

The third Sonata in the group, the E flat major, is always
a great favourite - perhaps because it so gracefully gives something of
the best of two worlds - the new and the old - of music. For example the
opening chords are a wonderful soft call to attention - as if the Evening
Star tapped on the casement. The Scherzo is finely spirited and pure Beethoven.
But the third movement, Menuetto, is a clean throw-back to a very early
type of harmonic organization. The finale is another, and more varied,
experiment in persistent rhythms.

The two Sonatas in G minor and G major, Op. 49, are sonatinas
in all but name; Dr. Walker considers they were written much earlier than
1802, their year of publication. There is evidence that the sonata version
of the tempo di menuetto in No. 2 is the original of the theme used for
the minuet of the Septet (1800).

With the Sonata in C major, Op. 53, composed in 1804,
dedicated to Count Waldstein, Bekka is right in saying that ‘a hitherto
unknown world of sound was revealed.’ It is a glorious work, demanding
an interpreter whose head and heart are as great as his technique is perfect.
The splendour of the first movement, the depth of wisdom and feeling packed
into the short molto adagio, and the final rondo which seems poised in
the sunny realms of air - these things are unforgettable. Originally the
Sonata had another slow movement which Beethoven withdrew on account of
its length, but I think perhaps he turned against it also on account of
a joke which Prince Lichnowsky played upon him with this andante, before
the Sonata was ready. Whatever his reasons, Beethoven was right. The andante
survives as the Andante favori in F, and its substitute in the Sonata
is a fine example of Beethoven’s power of retrospect and prospect, of
seeing a thing from both sides. Here he approached it from the allegro
as the slow movement and quitted it as the introduction to the rondo -
a pivot movement in fact, yet complete with its own noble character.

The short Sonata in F major, Op. 54, also composed in
1804, is a pleasant valley between two heights, but none the less interesting
because, to push my metaphor further, its materials seem to belong to
the same geological formation as the peaks of the Waldstein and Appassionata.
Beethoven reverts here to an early two-movement type of sonata. The first
movement, named by him in tempo d’un Menuetto, has an opening subject
that smacks strongly of Scotch folksong, and its melody has obvious links
with the famous second subject of the appassionata; a similarity which
gives one to think. The second movement, an allegretto, is described by
Professor Tovey as a ‘perpetuum mobile in two-part polyphony on a single
theme, with short archaic (melodic) exposition, but extensive development
and coda; running at a uniform pace which nothing can stop.’ He also points
out that this movement is the only instance (except the early two Preludes
in all the major keys) where Beethoven works round the ‘whole circle of
fifths.’ In watching the graceful running semiquaver passages I find great
pleasure in seeing how much they have in common with the finale of the
Waldstein. Indeed I sometimes think that Op. 54 is made out of the excess
of material for which Beethoven had no room in Opp. 53 and 57.

Following it in the same year came the Sonata in F minor,
Op. 57, which Cranz called the Appassionata. This magnificent work touches
the depths and heights. Beethoven’s imaginative and constructive power
are seen functioning at their highest. ‘Here the human soul asked mighty
questions of its God and had its reply,’ as Parry said. Precisely what
Beethoven himself meant is easier to feel from the music than to understand
from his own reference to it. He had been asked to explain the meaning
of the Sonata in D minor and the Appassionata. His reply was: ‘Read Shakespeare’s
Tempest.’

At first sight the connection is not very evident, though
here and there one can glimpse something. But after thinking things over
I have come to wonder whether the meaning may not be more philosophical
than dramatic. The Tempest is the play where certain commentators believe
Shakespeare made concealed allusions to esoteric wisdom, of which they
think he had become an initiate. Beethoven was attracted by esoteric thought;
witness his later study of Egyptian and Indian religious writings. Nor
in this was he singular. Schiller had laid aside poetry for ten years
to study philosophy. Haydn and Mozart were earnest Freemasons. The Magic
Flute, Beethoven’s favourite Mozart opera, was one long exposition of
esoteric truths through a muddled symbolism. Therefore it would not be
strange if Beethoven had been attracted by the symbolic vein in The Tempest.
His reference to Shakespeare may even be taken as a faint shadow of evidence
for the first subject of the Appassionata having been deliberately adapted
from the tune On the Banks of Allan Water. Scotch, Welsh and Irish folk-tunes
were well known in Vienna at that time. Haydn and others had arranged
them by the dozen for British publishers. Beethoven took a turn at the
game himself a few years later. So there is reason to believe he knew
the tune of Allan Water, and I should not find it hard to believe that
he linked it with Shakespeare in his mind because it too was British.
One must not push these speculations far, however, because composition
works along lines in a man’s mind that can never be quite explained in
words, since it is an act that transcends words. Whatever Beethoven’s
precise meaning in the Appassionata, the intention is unmistakable: it
is an overwhelming tragedy.

From 1804 to 1809 there was an almost complete gap in
Beethoven’s output for piano alone. Then in 1809 came another period of
sonata writing - the Sonata in F sharp major, Op. 78, the Sonata in G
major, Op. 79, and the Sonata in E flat major, Op. 81A, named by Beethoven
Das Lebewohl. With these it is convenient to bracket the Fantasia, Op.
77, composed in the same year, my reasons being that Czerny considered
it a typical example of a Beethoven extemporization, and that Beethoven
seems to have regarded it as a companion piece to the Sonata, Op. 78.
He dedicated the one to Count von Brunswick and the other to Countess
Therese von Brunswick, the brother and sister who were so devotedly attached
to him. The Fantasia is curious, but interesting: the Sonata is one of
the most subtly lovely things Beethoven ever wrote. The four opening bars
of adagio cantabile are like a curtain drawn back to reveal the tender
grace and playfulness smiling out from the allegro. No wonder Beethoven
prized this Sonata. He thought it infinitely superior to the ‘Moonlight.’
His choice of key - F sharp major - is unusual. In two movements he conveyed
the essentials of a much larger work. That first movement gives the feeling
of both a quick and slow movement; the second, as Bekker has pointed out,
is a combination of rondo and scherzo - a form which Beethoven employed
occasionally when at the height of his powers.

The Sonata in G major, alla tedesca, following it, is
straightforward, bright and intentionally easy. ‘Sonate facile ou sonatina’
was Beethoven’s own label.

The Lebewohl Sonata is a return to Beethoven’s grand
manner. It is also the sole example of declared programme music in his
sonatas, and was composed for his friend and pupil, the Archduke Rudolph,
when the latter was compelled to leave Vienna before the advance of Napoleon’s
army. It is a work on a noble scale; the ideas of departure, absence and
return are woven poetically into a powerful musical structure qua music,
and the treatment of the piano is broad and brilliant. Can Beethoven have
got his ‘original suggestion for the programme from J. S. Bach’s Capriccio
on the Departure of a Beloved Brother?

The Sonata in E minor, Op. 90, dedicated to Count Moritz
von Lichnowsky, is the last of Beethoven’s second-period works for piano.
Its two movements glow with the lyricism and colour of romance. Indeed
Beethoven intended to depict a romance. ‘Amidst peals of laughter said
Schindler, ‘ he told the Count [Lichnowsky] that he had tried to set his
courtship of his wife to music, observing also that if the count wanted
a superscription he might write over the first movement "Struggle
between head and heart" and over the second "Conversation with
the loved one."’ The point was that Count Lichnowsky had married
a plebeian - a singer as good as she was charming. Beethoven evidently
followed the romance with amused interest; he always had a soft spot in
his heart for a love affair.

Again came a gap in the chain of sonatas - two years
this time - and then in 1816 the Sonata in A major, Op. 101, earliest
in the great five of the third period. By now Beethoven had completed
his coloration of cyclic form with lyric hues and grace: his mind turned
towards a harder task - nothing less than the conquest of the highly specialized
province of contrapuntal music for harmonic form and expression. The two
most intellectual forms in music - the fugue and the sonata - were to
be brought into unity, for his new ethical message exceeded the capacities
of lyric form. Furthermore he had been advancing in chamber music and
in symphonic knowledge, and he had a new sort of thematic development
which consisted of extensive evolution from compact material. His last
five sonatas possess the breadth and majesty of symphonic thought and
the intimacy and unworldliness of chamber music. He felt them intensely
himself. For the first time in Op. 101 he gave his directions for expression
in German. Also without relinquishing the lyric elements he here began
to introduce contrapuntalism in the form of canon and fugato. The whole
Sonata is wonderfully unified.

The Sonata in B flat major, Op. 106 (1818), generally
known as the Hammerklavier, is even more closely unified. Beethoven brought
his whole equipment to bear on the task and even reverted to a device
known to composers of the early eighteenth century, which he had employed
himself in his string Quartet in G major, Op. 18, and was to employ again
in his Sonata, Op. 110 - the device of thematic kinship (or thematic metamorphosis)
between the movements.

Op. 106 is a terrifying Sonata - technically of immense
difficulty, exhaustingly long, and mentally the toughest thing he ever
wrote, except perhaps the Quartet in B flat major, Op. 130, The contrapuntal
devices and the intellectual power Beethoven put forth overwhelm one like
the statements of an astronomer about the universe. Bekker considers the
work a symphonic concert sonata on the old four-movement scheme. Maybe,
but its gigantic form is also a Brocken shadow thrown by the distant,
smaller being of modern music. After more than a century Beethoven’s Hammerklavier
Sonata and his Quartet, Op. 130, are just becoming fully intelligible.

Following the terrific Hammerklavier, the Sonata in E
major, Op. 109 (1820), and the Sonata in A flat major, Op, 110 (1821),
seem like havens of the islands of the blest. Not that Beethoven had abandoned
his purpose of conquering fugue for the sonata - rather he had achieved
it. The marvellous intellectual texture of these sonatas, the heavenly
relevance of all their details, are there for everyone who cares to study
them, but it is their surpassing beauty which always shines out in our
memories when their names are mentioned.

The Sonata in C minor, Op. 111, came a year later - in
1822. It was as if Beethoven had felt with Browning:

I was ever a fighter, so - one fight more,

The best and the last!

Yet the fight had long been foreseen. The theme of the
first movement had been sketched twenty years before. When the conflict
came, it was fought out with the very demons as protagonists; no human
terms give an idea of its magnitude. Nor can words describe the serenity
and light of the arietta that follows - a set of variations upon what
one may call a theme of light and peace everlasting.

Beethoven lived four years more, to complete the Missa
Solemnis, the ninth Symphony and the last quartets, but he never wrote
another sonata. Like Ulysses, it had been his

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Turning from the sonatas to survey Beethoven’s miscellaneous
pieces, one becomes aware of another chain of specialized works, running
parallel with the sonatas - the twenty-one sets of variations for solo
and the two sets for piano duet. Variation form interested Beethoven only
less than sonata form. Though he usually reached his highest powers when
the variations made part of a sonata or symphony, a few of the twenty-one
separate sets are of significance in relation to his general development.
Such things as the Variations on God Save The King and Rule Brittania
mean little more now than that Beethoven was scoring off Abt Vogler, or
that sentiment was pro-British in Vienna during the Napoleonic wars. But
the Dressler and Righini Variations meant something in Beethoven’s early
life, and the two sets of Variations composed during his summer at Heiligenstadt
in 1802 are documents of real value. Beethoven’s own verdict was:

I have made two sets of variations of which the first
may be said to number eight, the second thirty; both are written in
a really entirely new style ... Each theme in them is treated independently
and in a wholly different manner. As a rule I only hear of it through
other people when I have new ideas, since I never know it myself;
but this time I can assure myself that the style in both works is
new to me.

In view of what Beethoven did a year later in his Eroica
Symphony these variations are of great importance, and deserve an attention
they have not received. Op. 34 is usually remembered - when people remember
it at all - as the set where Beethoven modulated to a different key for
each variation. Which is very interesting, and seems a link with his early
modulating Preludes. But speaking personally my imagination is more fired
by the forecast of the Funeral March in the Eroica which I think I see
in the C minor Variation V. So too with the fifteen Variations with Fugue
in E flat major, Op. 35. which enter the Eroica sphere. Their theme is
the very one from Beethoven’s own ballet Prometheus which he employed
later for the finale of the Eroica, and the canonic and fugal devices,
the treatment of the piano and the powerful intellectual progress of the
music are a presage of his third-period style.

The thirty-two Variations in C minor (1806) are far better
known today, and are a sort of landmark, though Beethoven’s own exclamation
on hearing them was: ‘That nonsense by me? O Beethoven, what an ass you
were!’

Compared with the sonatas and variations Beethoven’s
other works for piano - the Rondos, short dances, Polonaise for the Empress
of Russia, etc. - are not more than little asteroids in a solar system
of music - yes, even the rondo, Rage over a Lost Penny.

An exception must be made in favour of the three collections
of bagatelles, small pieces which, even if they are without the genuine
lyrical quality that came into piano music with the next generation (Schubert,
Schumann, Chopin, Mendelssohn), are nevertheless miniatures in which motifs
of the lighter symphonic kind were set by Beethoven into logical, self-contained
little frames of form. The seven Bagatelles, Op. 33, are of early date
and least value. Perhaps written for Beethoven’s pupils, they require
nevertheless players well grounded in technique and interpretation. Of
the far later eleven Bagatelles, Op. 119, Nos. 7 to 11 inclusive are known
to have been composed for Friedrich Starcke’s Wiener Pianoforteschule
(piano method). The technique is deliberately simple. Beethoven apparently
regarded these pieces as ‘pot boilers but grâce à Dieu
they turned out lovely little things, showing their filiation among the
great works - the Mass in D major and the Sonata in E major, Op. 109,
which were then occupying Beethoven’s mind. The six Bagatelles, Op. 126,
sketched practically complete. Nottebohm thinks they were designed as
a homogeneous series. Beethoven certainly called them Kleinigkeiten, but
considered they were probably the best things of the kind he had ever
written.

The year after he completed his last sonata, he produced
a work which was his last word in the series of solo variations - an outer
and greater planet!

One may regard these thirty-three Variations on a Waltz
by Diabelli as a sort of companion piece to Bach’s Kunst der Fuge, in
that Beethoven here put forth his full power and learning to demonstrate
a form and his mastership. The monumental work originated in a not very
noble request from Diabelli the publisher for a variation apiece from
thirty-three composers of the day on a waltz which he had composed. Beethoven
was among the invitees. He declined, called Diabelli’s tune a Schusterfleck
(cobbler’s patch) and in a sort of savage pride - one Beethoven outweighing
thirty-two other composers - wrote thirty-three Variations himself. It
was - and is - an amazing display of virtuosity. There are moods when
one almost wishes it had been an impossibility, but it was a marvellous
last word!